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One of the chief magistrates in ancient Athens, especially, by preëminence, the first of the nine chief magistrates. -- Ar*chon"tic, a.

An archbishop or other chief prelate.

A chief priest; also, a kind of vicar, or a rural dean.

The chief primate. Milton.

A chief or transcendent traitor. I. Watts.

A chief treasurer. Specifically, the great treasurer of the German empire.

An oily liquid substance, C8H13O2N, the chief alkaloid of the betel nut, to which the latter owes its anthelmintic action.

A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps, and vagabonds; flash.

u and love are still my argument. Shak. The abstract or argument of the piece. Jeffrey. [Shields] with boastful argument portrayed. Milton.

The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.

Formerly, an armor bearer, as of a knight, an esquire who bore his shield and rendered other services. In later use, one next in degree to a knight, and entitled to armorial bearings. The term is now superseded by esquire. Jacob.

Armor: defensive and offensive arms. Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears. Milton.

The ensigns armorial of a family, consisting of figures and colors borne in shields, banners, etc., as marks of dignity and distinction, and descending from father to son.

"That which is behind"; the rear; -- chiefly used as an adjective in the sense of behind, rear, subordinate. Arriere fee, Arriere fief, a fee or fief dependent on a superior fee, or a fee held of a feudatory. -- Arriere vassal, the vassal of a vassal.

iority, or commanding influence; ascendency; as, one man has the ascendant over another. Chievres had acquired over the mind of the young monarch the ascendant not only of a tutor, but of a parent. Robertson.

sional difference (Astron.), the difference between oblique and right ascension; -- used chiefly as expressing the difference between the time of the rising or setting of a body and six o'clock, or six hours from its meridian passage.

One of the chiefs or pontiffs of the Roman province of Asia, who had the superintendence of the public games and religious rites. Milner.

A genus of plants of the natural order Leguminosæ. The species are chiefly natives of the Cape of Good Hope.

The venomous asp. [Chiefly poetic] Shak. Tennyson.

re. Assay and essay are radically the same word; but modern usage has appropriated assay chiefly to experiments in metallurgy, and essay to intellectual and bodily efforts. See Essay.]